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Spinning in the Tray

Welcome to a (hopefully) weekly post where I touch on whatever has been spinning in my XBox, DVD player or watched through streaming services (I know that doesn’t fit with the whole motif, but that’s a catchy title…..right?)

Infinite Head Scratching

I finished BioShock Infinite the other night (no spoilers here) and the first thing to go through my mind was…..nothing. The game throws SO MUCH mind bending stuff at you in the last 15-20 minutes that you need at least 24 hours before you can fully absorb all the information. Then, after scouring message boards and watching multiple discussions about the game by people far more insightful than you, it still is batshit crazy that a video game could go in the direction Infinite does without completely losing the player. It’s a testament to Ken Levine’s creative team that they could condense such complex issues to be at least somewhat understandable. All I know is that I’ve started a second playthrough, and understanding a lot of the more cryptic things the game throws at you is tremendous fun.

Once More Into The Animus

A few weeks ago I decided to replay Assassin’s Creed III, a game that disappointed me greatly last year, to see if six or so months away (I finished it in mid-November) would allow me to look at the game without the expectations I had at release. As of this writing, I am just into the beginning of the Connor section (the Boston Massacre has just happened). Connor is simply not an interesting character; his voice actor is not very good and gives a very lifeless performance. His story gets very little time to unfold; one second you are playing hide and seek, you encounter Charles Lee once and next thing you know, your village is on fire. It’s like they knew they took too much time with the Haytham story that they needed to move on with the rest of the game. I’m also remembering how downright pointless many of the side missions are; hunting gets you items to sell at shops to get money to buy better equipment, but the combat is so easy that I remembered I basically went through the entire game the first time with the weapons I had from the beginning. Maybe playing a bit more will show me things I missed the first time, but my thoughts haven’t changed so far.

Roger Paid Me To Write This Part

Mad Men‘s sixth season debuts this Sunday (4/7) and I’ve been catching up on season five on Netflix. How John Slattery didn’t get an Emmy nomination last year is beyond me; Roger Sterling is one of the best characters on TV. His struggle to stay relevant in Sterling Draper Cooper Pryce (his name is FIRST, dammit!) in the face of Pete Campbell’s machinations and his incredible chemistry with everyone on the show (if AMC greenlights a spin-off where Roger and Sally roam the country solving crimes by Roger paying off whoever he needs to, I’m there) is great fun. The era of the show is starting to move into an interesting time (especially Vietnam creeping into the nation’s consciousness more and more) and I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

Hope you enjoyed reading the first edition of an idea I’ve had for a while.